When he missed the bustle of a film set, he turned pages to past memories

After a successful career as

director

and producer of Tamil films that lasted many decades,

Muktha Srinivasan

found the loneliness of the past few years hanging heavily on him. As he sat near the entrance of his bungalow in the mornings, awaiting the rare visitor, he would ponder on the days when his house and office were a beehive of activity.

At a function at a Mylapore sabha a few months ago, his response to an yesteryear actor who came to his seat to make inquiries about his health was sharp. ‘‘Have you forgotten how many times you used to ring me up for a role? Can you not call me at home once in a while,’’ he asked. The actor, somewhat taken aback, said that she always thought about him. Srinivasan was unyielding, and said, "Don’t give me that line."

As I later sat with him, trying to jog his memory to ferret out details about his long and eventful innings in the film world, Srinivasan referred to some detail he had mentioned in some book of his and even managed to produce the book and a photocopy of the pages that had an account of the incident I was quizzing him about. As his film career tapered off, writing about the past was a pastime that kept him engaged. But he would complain about lack of institutional support for his books. He had begun to bring out booklets, easy on the pocket of his visitors who often used to ask him about details of the past. ‘’Take your pick. You can pay if you have the money, or you can pay later,’’ he would say.

I reminded him of the day when there was a preview screening of ‘Nayakan’ (1987) with a function on the stage. He had sat in the back row among the audience despite being the producer of the film as he had been miffed at the way in which the budget of the film had overshot all limits. I have seen him as an effervescent and bubbly speaker on stage, but on this occasion he was serenely quiet, preferring to put the lid on a past controversy.

He made films, successful ones at that, with stars like Sivaji Ganesan, Jayalalithaa, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, but rarely was a rupee spent extravagantly and scarcely was a day wasted unprofitably. Yes, he had suffered by giving supporting roles to Savithri and got scolded by his elder brother Ramaswamy for risking things with an actor who was drinking herself to death. But otherwise, everything always went according to the schedule. No wonder the contemporary film industry with its quirky ways seemed chaotic to Srinivasan.

Ramaswamy was an excellent organiser with a keen eye for detail, while Srinivasan had mastered the art of rolling out a story without much ado and at the most economical cost. His films were perhaps stagey and melodramatic, but never crass or corrupting. Film technicians would mention that Srinivasan’s editor would come in the morning by train from Bengaluru, edit a crisply shot film by the evening, and leave the same night. Srinivasan’s shooting ratio was 2:1, meaning that he shot only twice the duration of footage of his film. The brothers had made the ‘Muktha films’ brand a byword for reliability, durability and quality family entertainment. But Anna (Ramaswamy) died in 1988 leaving Srinivasan distraught, and later attempts of Srinivasan’s sons at film direction and production hadn’t been altogether happy.

Srinivasan liked to wear his progressive ideas on his sleeve, leaving the top buttons of his shirt open to show he was not wearing the sacred thread. He would relate the queries Rajinikanth aimed at him on this point, with his answer being that a childhood wracked by pain and poverty had made him averse to religion. Srinivasan stuck to his unorthodox ways at least in public, avoiding any religious colour on his 80th birth anniversary. Not any priest, but the self-proclaimed atheist and friend of about 60 years, then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, M Karunanidhi handed him the ‘thaali’ to tie around his wife’s neck. But these were only social responses of Srinivasan; in his final years he devoutly wore the sacred ash or the Vaishnavite mark on his forehead.

(The author is a historian of Tamil cinema and an author of several books on the subject)